Border Guards in Ukraine Abandon Posts

Ukrainian border guards as they arrived in Luhansk. On Wednesday, pro-Russia rebels had overrun the guards’ central command headquarters.Credit
Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

CHERVONOPARTIZANSK, Ukraine — Border guards here, near the Russian border in eastern Ukraine, fled their posts for fear of attacks by separatist militias on Wednesday, helping open a strategic corridor for the transport of goods, contraband and war material from Russia that could lead to a widening of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

As evening fell in this small frontier town, a convoy of about 20 trucks, minivans and cars containing border guards and their families, including children, bumped over the rutted roads here along Ukraine’s eastern frontier with Russia. Their commander, who gave his name only as Sergei, said they had received confused orders but that they decided to leave, fearing for their lives and their families’ safety.

Earlier on Wednesday, rebels overran the border guards’ central command headquarters in Luhansk, unplugging a large stretch of Ukraine’s southeastern border from central government oversight. A number of border guards were wounded in the siege that lasted two days and left the complex windowless, riddled with bullets, and partly burned. Rebels hauled away boxes of weapons and other items on Wednesday.

Against this background, Ukraine’s military reported gains in the area around Slovyansk, a rebel stronghold that is now almost entirely encircled by government forces.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian troops swept into the city of Krasny Liman, a railroad hub to the northeast of Slovyansk, seizing the southern half of the city and checking passports of local residents to find fighters, several residents said. The military has reported hundreds of rebel deaths. The rebels have put their losses at about a dozen.

Ukraine’s border with Russia has become a focal point in the unrest in this country’s troubled East, as fresh supplies and fighters from Russia have been leaking across. An open passage would allow goods and fighters to flow from Russia unimpeded, significantly increasing the power of the insurgency here.

A Ukrainian military spokesman, Vladislav Seleznyov, acknowledged that some of the border guards were no longer at their posts, but said that they had simply been moved to other locations because of a “sharp and sudden worsening of the situation,” according to a local news outlet. He did not say how many units had been moved, but said that they had been directed to stay near the border and that one unit had been in a firefight as it retreated.

The military’s inability to come to the aid of the border guards speaks to the challenges faced in confronting the separatists across an expanse of territory in southeastern Ukraine and, ultimately, to restoring order to an area that seems increasingly incapable even of defending its own borders.

To that end, officials in Kiev on Wednesday asked the National Security and Defense Council to consider imposing martial law in the area, which would help the military distinguish fighters from civilians by limiting movement and tightening document checks.

Ukraine’s control over its borders seemed tenuous at best. On Wednesday evening, armed men in camouflage, some with bandannas tied on their heads, strode confidently around the small border post area here, which is little more than a small collection of buildings, a stop sign and a security gate. The Ukrainian flag had been taken down and the signature green trucks of the Ukrainian border guards were gone. No Ukrainian military uniforms could be seen.

“These are our guys,” said Alexei, a taxi driver who supports the rebels and noticed the change of guard in the late afternoon. “The entrance is open now.”

In the city of Luhansk, the capital of Ukraine’s easternmost region, a lone military base at the airport was the remaining element of control by the central government. A visit by journalists on Wednesday showed a small contingent of police and army officers who were huddled behind concrete guard posts and appeared on edge.

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Bases seemed to fall one after another. On Tuesday night, the rebels overran a base for Ukrainian internal security forces in Luhansk, with gunfire rattling in the center of the city for hours. The police forces inside were ordered to remove their uniforms, and on Wednesday morning they lay in a messy pile inside the base, whose perimeter was smeared with blood in three places. The Associated Press cited officials as saying six militants were killed and three Ukrainian servicemen were injured in the fighting.

“It’s chaos,” said a massage therapist who identified herself only as Zhanna, and who lives in an apartment building, the roof of which rebels used to fire on the border guard base. She pointed to empty boxes of ammunition in her building’s stairwell. “These are bandits, plain and simple,” she said of the rebels.

She expressed pity for the border guards, whom she said were mostly young men from the area trying to feed their families.

Fear and confusion prevailed for the column of border guards who left their posts near here. For hours they had been unable to establish contact with friendly forces, and stood exposed in a long line on the side of the road, unsure of their direction or destination. The territory in southeast Luhansk is heavily rebel controlled, and a column of Ukrainian forces is an extremely vulnerable target. At one point they turned around, concerned they were driving in the wrong direction.

The border is porous, but until Wednesday, had not been open entirely. A group of Russian Orthodox charity workers in Luhansk on Wednesday said it took them three days to cross with a large delivery of medical supplies. The workers, who had the long beards that are traditional for observant Eastern Orthodox men and wore anoraks and Bolle sunglasses, said they could have passed faster had they agreed to pay a bribe of $500 per truck. As for where they crossed, “it’s a state secret,” their leader said.

In a show of force on Wednesday by the Ukrainian government, the acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, made a sudden visit to a military-controlled area at the scene of the fighting in Slovyansk. While there, he said there would be some partial border closings, though the precise meaning was not clear.

The unrest in the East is a major obstacle for Ukraine’s new government, and officials seem eager to combat it. President-elect Petro Poroshenko has compared the rebels to Somali pirates, and pledged to crush them. But military campaigns also come with risks, namely of alienating what is left of the moderate civilian population in the troubled areas. At a funeral on Wednesday for Alexander Gizai, one of the eight people killed by a Ukrainian airstrike two days before, anger hung in the air.

“How could they use air power in the center of the city, in broad daylight, next to a jungle gym?” asked a Russian literature teacher named Georgy, who had come to pay his respects to Mr. Gizai, and said he despised the separatists. “Ukraine was always divided. It was always hard to understand it as one country. Now it is even harder.”